Microsoft

CHENNAI: The tango Nokia and Foxconn had before the feature phone music faded is set to revive in a new avatar as Nokia's acquirer, Microsoft, closes in on an agreement that will have its smartphones rolling out of Foxconn's factory in Sri City , Andhra Pradesh. If the deal comes through, it would be a start in local manufacture for Microsoft phones in India. Multiple sources confirmed that the Foxconn plant will produce two variants of Microsoft smartphones for India, a...

By Matt Weinberger In its annual corporate report to the SEC, Microsoft laid out its unexpected plans for how it expects Windows 10 to drive the company's growth. "Our ambition for Windows 10 is to broaden our economic opportunity through three key levers: an original equipment manufacturer ('OEM') ecosystem that creates exciting new hardware designs for Windows 10; our own commitment to the health and profitability of our first-party premium device portfolio; and monetization...

It's quite fair if people think I suffer from attention deficit disorder (ADD). My career history, however short, indicated that. I quit my job in Microsoft in the US to come back and start a classifieds site for the college-goers. When it started making money, I started selling eyewear online in the US. When that venture was at its peak, I decided to sell eyewear in India and focused my energies here. After all my hop, skip and...

Finding Nandan and Rohini Nilekani's home in Bengaluru's upscale residential neighbourhood of Koramangala is as easy or as difficult as nosing out any other address for the first time in a big city. The almost inconspicuous driveway leading up to the bungalow belies the structure built out on 30,000 square feet bang in the heart of the city. A rather cramped external facade has no tell-tale signs of the famous residents...

By Matt Weinberger Microsoft is an investor in Uber's monster "close to $1 billion" round that values the car service company at $50 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported this afternoon. Bloomberg separately reported that Microsoft is "considering" the investment. It's odd that Microsoft would make such a big late-stage investment in a company like Uber, which falls well outside of its recent focus on user productivity. But with...

By Matt Weinberger With 14 million installations in its first 24 hours, Windows 10 is looking like a hit. But one big question remains: Why would Microsoft give Windows 10 away for free? Here's one possible answer. And it should keep Google awake at night. Google gives you all of its goodies for free, from search to Gmail to YouTube, because it wants to harvest your personal data and use it to serve you more ads. Meanwhile, with Windows 10, Microsoft is trying...

BRUSSELS: Several rivals of Microsoft raised doubts on Friday about the merit of the US software giant's plans to strip the Internet Explorer web browser from its ubiquitous Windows operating system in Europe. Microsoft said on Thursday that it would ship its Windows 7 operating system in Europe without Internet explorer in hope of avoiding a new antitrust showdown with EU competition regulators. "I don't think it's enough. It's too little, too late," Opera Software...

Microsoft's push into cloud computing will help the company compete with Google, Apple and Salesforce .com. It also will hurt profit margins. The company's cloud software lets corporate customers pay a subscription to do things like manage spreadsheets and corporate websites with software stored and run on Microsoft's servers. The new services also help users view TV shows and edit photos on the Web. While that may be great news for customers, the cost of storing...

SAN FRANCISCO: Microsoft is increasing the openness of its software to appease antitrust regulators and please businesses trending toward more diverse computer systems. Microsoft said on Thursday it is making "broad-reaching changes" to its technology and business practices to enhance the ease with which its software interacts with partners, customers and competitors. "These steps represent an important step and significant change in how we share information about our products and...

When Microsoft Corp. hired computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee away from hardware maker Silicon Graphics Inc. in 1998, the move underscored how thoroughly the software giant dominated the computer industry. Not only did it monopolise PC operating systems and hold an edge in Web browsers, but it was also vacuuming up the world's brightest technologists. Lee's expertise was in speech recognition, considered one of the next big leaps in computing. With people like him flocking to Microsoft's labs,...

WASHINGTON: The next version of the Windows operating system will likely arrive in early 2010, officials at Microsoft have said. The most important change to the software, currently dubbed Windows 7, will be its multi-touch technology. Customers will be able to use their fingers to perform tasks such as moving documents or displaying photos right on the touch-ready display. Windows 7 is based on Windows Vista, Microsoft's current operating system.

By Lily Prasuethsut It's no secret that wearable battery life is atrocious. Two days is typically when smartwatches and fitness trackers start notifying you they're hungry for more power. The Pebble Time, Misfit, Razer Nabu X, among a few others, can hold a charge for extended periods of time. The Pebble series is notable for its seven day battery life which matches up with the Razer fitness tracker, while the Misfit Flash can last months thanks to its lithium ion coin battery.

WASHINGTON: Some 14 million people installed the Windows 10 operating system in the first 24 hours following its release, Microsoft said, calling the response "overwhelmingly positive. " The company said its new operating system aimed at computers, mobile devices and other gadgets got off to a strong start toward its goal of reaching one billion devices. "We're humbled and grateful to see the response to Windows 10," corporate vice president Yusuf Mehdi said in a blog...

By S.Aadeetya Not that most of us care about it but without putting too much thoughts into it (and rightly so), Microsoft has chosen to put its own Edge as the default web browser on Windows 10 systems. Edge is seen by Microsoft as the Google Chrome killer. They have always tried to achieve the same with its Internet Explorer but never really succeeded in their plans. Initial reviews and opinion on the newest browser in town is quite positive but...

NEW DELHI: Micromax, the nation's No. 2 smartphone vendor, used to spend about 10% of its marketing budget on digital media until last year. Now, more than a third of it goes towards online campaigns. Rivals such as Karbonn, Lava and Microsoft too have increased their spending on digital advertising, as they target the fast expanding clutch of buyers who first do the research online to zero in on a product and they buy it from one of the...

By Ben Moshinsky Bill Gates topped a list of the biggest insider sellers, which was dominated by the big names in tech. Gates sold more than $717 million of Microsoft stock this year, according to Sqoop.com, and he wasn't the only one to turn his equity into cash. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page dumped more than $1 billion of their company stock between them, while former Twitter CEO Evan Williams ...

LOS ANGELES: Software giant Microsoft Corp is apologising for altering a photo on its website to change the race of one of the people shown in the picture. A photo on the Seattle-based company's US website shows two men, one Asian and one black, and a white woman seated at a conference room table. But on the website of Microsoft's Polish business unit, the black man's head has been replaced with that of a white man. The colour of his hand remains unchanged. The photo...

NEW DELHI: In a move that could equip millions of Indian students with advanced computer knowledge, global IT giant Microsoft on Wednesday launched an innovative project providing free access to its latest software developer and designer tools. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates launched 'DreamSpark', which will provide access to an estimated 10 million students to the special software. "We want to do everything we can to equip a new generation of technology leaders with the...

PALO ALTO: Microsoft says its' new Windows 10 operating system is now running on more than 14 million computers, two days after the software was released as a free download. That's a far cry from the company's goal of getting Windows 10 onto a billion devices within three years. Microsoft says it's releasing the software in waves to make sure downloads go smoothly. In a blog post late Thursday, Microsoft said it has not yet delivered Windows 10 to everyone who...

By Brian X Chen Windows 10, the next version of Microsoft's operating system, arrived Wednesday, and it will have a familiar look and feel to the more than 1 billion people who have touched a Windows computer in the past two decades. That is a stark change from the last time Microsoft made a big revision to its operating system, in 2012 with the release of Windows 8 - a release that didn't go so well. Many customers were confused by the flurry of...